Page 19 of Merciless

“Mavwick,” a little voice calls before she races my way with her arms out wide.My lips spread in a wide smile as my heart tumbles in my chest.

“Hey, trouble. What are you doing awake?” I ask, lifting the dark-haired little cherub up and making her giggle.

She’s the best thing this town has to offer. It kills me that she’s forced to grow up here, experiencing the worst that life has to offer.

“The sun is up, so I am up,” she announces, before her exhausted looking grandmother shuffles into the room.

I study her closely, noting the extra lines on her face and the dark shadows under her eyes. She’s too old to be running around after a wild toddler, but she won’t have it any other way.

I get it. I do. I just wish she’d let me help more.

“The blackout blind I brought is working well then?” I quip.

“As good as a chocolate teapot,” Sheila mutters, making a beeline for the coffee pot. “Coffee? You look like you need one.”

I smile grimly at her in agreement, before putting Daisy down and letting her run toward her toys.

“Come and play with me, Mavwick,” she shouts, way louder than necessary for this time in the morning.

“I will,” I promise. “I just need to talk to Grams first.”

She stares up at me from her spot on the floor beside her toybox, her argument on the tip of her tongue, but she knows better than to complain.

“What’s going on?” Sheila asks once Daisy is distracted and chattering away to her dolls.

“Alana has vanished,” I confess quietly.

“Maverick,” Sheila chastises.

“I don’t need a lecture,” I mutter. “I just need to know if you’ve heard anything.”

Her hands still, and she sucks in a breath before she turns her eyes on me.

“Maverick, don’t you think that I’d have called you if I heard anything?”

I stare back at her, trying to pretend I’m not intimidated by a seventy-something-year-old woman. But hell, this old-school Creeker just has some kind of aura about her that can bring even the baddest gangster to his knees—metaphorically and literally, I’m sure.

“Yeah, I know,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck.

“I warned you that this would happen. Free spirits aren’t meant to be tied down, Maverick Murray.”

“She wouldn’t just run. Not without—”

“Telling you?

“Don’t be naïve, boy. If she wanted out, the last thing she would do is tell you. She knows too well that you’d drag her straight back, kicking and screaming. Maybe this is for the best.”

“No,” I argue.

I know what she’s saying is true. It’s the first option I came up with when she never returned home yesterday.

But I don’t want to believe it.

I won’t believe it.

What we have. It might be unconventional, but it works for us. Or at least it does to a point.

I thought she was happy-ish.

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